


A Dangerous Game

by CaptainAmelia22



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Gunshot Wounds, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-02
Updated: 2014-08-02
Packaged: 2018-02-11 10:11:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2064114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaptainAmelia22/pseuds/CaptainAmelia22
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She runs to him, when there's no where else to go.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Dangerous Game

There is someone in the safe house.  

Someone _different._

Steve’s jaw clenches and his fingers tighten on the shield’s straps but he doesn’t move from the front door of the run-down apartment; Natasha had inexplicably left the coordinates for the place in a text a few nights before-no explanation for why.  Sam had snorted at the winky face she’d tacked on on the end of her message but Steve had simply smiled before deleting it, coordinates stored away in the back of his mind; it had been her way of reassuring him everything was all right-or as all right as could be expected since the Fallout.  

As for the coordinates themselves...

He still worries about her every day, worries about how she is handling her secrets coming out after years of careful control-even now, almost two months since SHIELD fell apart and Hydra emerged into the 21st century, he worries about her.  

For now though, the trials of the Black Widow are the furthest thing from his mind.  For now, he cannot think about what Sam has found out from their contact in Philadelphia about the Winter Soldier’s (And isn’t it funny that she knew they had heard from said contact mere hours before she’d texted him.  Isn’t it _funny_...) whereabouts.  

For now, every one of his senses strains forward, towards the main part of the flat where he is sure someone waits for him.  His hearing-still sharp despite the hell he’s gone through in recent months-homes in on ragged breathing and a hammering heartbeat he can hear mere feet from where he stands and he frowns.

Whoever this is...They are _different._

No one should know about this hidey-hole-no one but Sam Wilson and the sender of a now long-deleted message.

So whoever this is, is _dangerous._

He does not feel particularly threatened though-this is a trapped animal, cornered, at the end of a line.  This is…

Someone needing saving.  

His fingers fiddle with the softened leather of the shield’s straps and he cocks his head, listening for a moment to that hammering heartbeat still beating frantically against a stranger’s ribcage.  

He wonders, briefly, if he should text an S.O.S to Sam or if he should grab the pistol on the kitchen counter that he left there this morning before going out to scour Philly’s streets for his ghost.  

That moment doesn’t last long.

He tenses when he catches the faint scrape of a bootheel on the scarred floorboards of the living room/kitchen and as he prepares  to throw himself forward, towards the gun he is sure he’d left on the counter and the threat lurking in the flat, a familiar scent washes over him.

And he nearly drops the shield.

“ _Kate._ ”  

She has her gun aimed at him, directly at his heart, and despite the blood drying on her hands and pooling at her feet, her hands are steady.  

It’s her eyes though, that make him realize just how close she is to falling apart.

They are wild-more black than brown, her pupils blown until there is barely any iris left-and he can see where her tears have left trails on her dirty cheeks.  Every inch of her screams of too many days being on the run-of a world falling apart all around her-of too many bullets heading in her direction.

And yet...her gun never wavers.

“Captain Rogers?!”

Her voice, level and with that slight husky quality that had always made the fine hairs on the back of his neck stand upright every time she greeted him in the hallway outside their apartments, washes over him there in Natasha’s Philadelphia rat-hole and he finally drops the shield.

She doesn’t jump at the teeth-jarring vibration the disc causes-she barely blinks at the sound it makes and that, more than the shock or the blood, scares him more than anything.

How many days has she been on the run?  

How many men has she shot with that gun?

How did she escape the Triskelion?

_How did she find me?_

“You’re safe now,” he says as he eases the gun from her steady-as-death hands and wraps his fingers around her slender wrist.  The bones grind between his fingers-too thin, she’s too thin-but she shows no sign of him hurting her.  

He swallows heavily against the urge to wrap her in his arms and keep her safe; this is an agent of SHIELD.  She is Agent 13 (God, what is her _name_?  Natasha told him, that day in the cemetery.  She _told him_ ) and she will not take kindly to his comfort.  

They didn’t part on the best of terms, that day right before the world went to hell.  

 _Why is she_ here?!

His thumb runs gently over the delicate skin of her wrist as he eases the gun from her palms.  It is as much comfort as he will allow himself to give.

He can protect her in other ways...

“It’s okay, neighbor,” he says when her shell-shocked eyes lock on his and he slides the safety on on her .22 before tucking it in the back of his jeans.  He smiles gently, despite her shaking, and makes sure his voice is gentle and level, despite the anxiety he feels at the amount of blood he can see and smell on her slender body.  Her eyes never leave his, even as she sags to her knees, wrist still caught in his fingers.  He follows her to the scarred flooring, bending his massive body over hers protectively as she begins to tremble.

He understands the terror and vague disconnect in her eyes.

He understands what it feels like, realizing you’re finally safe after days of being nearly dead.

Sam would mutter about PTSD and how they all needed therapy.

He simply gathers her too-thin body in his arms and tries to ignore the feel of her blood leaking through his shirt.

He can protect her in other ways...

“You’re safe, Kate,” he repeats one more time as her fingers tangle in his clothes and she begins to cry, racking sobs tearing through her body as she tries to bite her panic back.  Her hair smells like sweat and smoke and he tries to understand the comfort he finds in that gritty scent.  

He closes his eyes and rubs his thumb gently over the pulse in her wrist, comforting her in the only way he knows how.

He can anchor her.

“Everything is going to be fine,” he murmurs soothingly as her sobs begin to ease and her body goes limp in his arms.  

“You’re safe with me.”  

She simply tucks her face under his chin, presses her dirty and tear-stained cheek to his collarbones and finally, after days of being hunted, lets herself collapse.

“Thank you,” she whispers as he holds her and for the first time in days she lets herself think, _I’m safe now._

**

She’s bleeding out on him and there’s absolutely nothing he can do about it.  

“I need to take you to a hospital, Kate.”  

She shakes her head against the threadbare pillows and her blonde hair sticks to the sweat beading on her cheeks and neck.  His fingers itch to smooth it out of her face, but he cannot spare the hands.

She’s bleeding out on him and he hasn’t had to tie bandages around a friend in over seventy years.

“Kate.”  

He says her name, his voice scolding despite the panic he’s feeling at the sight of blood beginning to spot the thick layers of bandages he continues to wind around her battered body but she doesn’t care.

She’s still in fight-or-flight mode.  

She’s still falling apart.  

He wishes he knew how to put her back together again.

There’s another roll of bandages waiting for him, in the First Aid kit Sam always made sure they packed with them ( _I’m not a super-soldier, Rogers.  I can’t heal like a goddamn Hercules.  Put some more Iron Man band-aids in that thing)_ and his fingers only shake a bit as he tucks the end of the bandage he’d just finished wrapping tightly around her waist between another fold.  He wishes fixing her could be as easy as wrapping a few pieces of linen around the hole in her belly, but nothing has ever been easy in his life.  

“I won’t be able to stop the bleeding, Kate,” he mutters as she shifts beside him and bites back a groan when a wave of agonizing pain washes over her, despite the morphine he gave her just a few minutes before.  “You need to see a doctor.”

“No,” she whispers, her voice as ragged as she looks and he winces when her fingers lock on his wrist.  “No-please.  He’ll find me-he’ll find me again.”  

Steve hesitates in the process of checking the kit for maybe another dose of morphine or maybe a better antiseptic and meets her dark gaze.  “Who’s ‘he,’ Kate?” he asks quietly, making sure not to push-this has been the third time she’s mentioned a man since he got her on the couch and somewhat relaxed. She has a fever-he can feel it on her skin, can see it in the sweat pooling in the hollow of her collar bones-but he doesn’t think her muttering about a man finding her is the fever talking.

He thinks it may be fear.  

And his asking her what she’s been running from feels like pushing because she pales even further and shifts her gaze from his to the streaked living room windows.  He can understand hiding from ghosts.

He can understand that.

But he is supposed to be protecting her-from ghosts and from bullets.

It’s his entire purpose in life.

He pushes.

And wraps another bandage around the first two-already blood and sweat stained.

“Kate.  Tell me who you’re running from.”

Her fingers clench tightly around his wrist and he winces when her thumbnail presses against his pulse-point, an instinct left-over from her days as one of the few female SHIELD Agents.  “My name isn’t Kate,” she snarls, her eyes a little wild now-now that the fever is truly raging and some of the pain has faded to a dull ache in her abdomen.

A ghost of her old fierceness enters her gaze and he suddenly remembers the name Natasha mentioned in passing while standing in the cemetery with him and Sam, a folder in her hands.  

He remembers the way her eyes glittered with a mischievous light he only ever saw when she was trying to set him up on dates with the girls from work.

And he remembers the name she said, just before she faded between the stones, ever the enigma-their Black Widow.

“Sharon,” he says and her eyes widen slightly, the fever making their brown depths nearly iridescent in the gloomy light of his safe-house.  “It’s Sharon, isn’t it?”

She barely breathes, her eyes locked on his, but her fingers ease enough on his wrist so he can continue wrapping the bandage around her waist and she whispers, “My name is Sharon-Sharon Carter.  And I used to be an agent of SHIELD.”

He doesn’t say anything.

Because in the end, he’s not surprised that her last name is Carter.

_**_

There is someone in the safe-house.  

Steve’s eyes fly open the moment he realizes he and Ka- _Sharon_ aren’t alone and he grabs his shield before he can even think.

There is someone in the safe-house and they are _dangerous._

Truly dangerous and for the first time in days he wishes he had back-up.  He wishes Sam wasn’t still out in the city, searching for clues as to the whereabouts of their ghost.

He wishes he hadn’t left his phone in the living room, amongst the scattered remains of the First-Aid kit.  

Out of luck and fucking out of time.  

He hesitates.

“Well, well.  The Carter bitch ran to you then, Rogers.  I guess my instincts aren’t completely fucked up then,” a familiar voice drawls from the dark-as-death bedroom doorway and Steve tries to fight the skin-crawling reaction that voice causes in his tense body. He can’t see worth a damn-can’t see where the bastard is even standing and he bites his panic back.

_How did he find me?_

With that errant thought he glances behind him and his throat goes dry with the realization that it isn’t _him_ this monster has come for.  

That protective urge comes roaring back and it takes all he has not to throw himself forward, shield raised and teeth clenched on a curse.  

_I’m not the one he’s been hunting.  Sonuva-_

Sharon sleeps fitfully at his back, curled in his bed, and protective urges still roaring, he shifts so he stands between her and this monster who’s been hunting her for days.  

“Get the fuck out of here Rumlow,” he snarls and he can’t believe he’s saying that name once more.  He can’t believe-

Sam said he was _dead._

That there was no way anyone could have survived the Triskelion burning-that no one in their right fucking minds could survive a Helicarrier falling on their worthless heads.

Sam said he was dead and it makes sense now, why Sharon was running.  

Brock Rumlow always knew how to hold a grudge and if she’s anything like her aunt ( _Her_ aunt _-how could I be so stupid?  She’d been living beside me for months and I’d never put the pieces together before now?  Jesus._ Stupid _)_ she would know just how to make his life difficult.  

Not for the first time he wonders just what happened in the Triskelion on that day he destroyed SHIELD.  

His eyes drift to Sharon once more and he has to fight something other than a protective urge from raging within him.  

For the first time he wonders just what this woman had to do with SHIELD’s fall.

Rumlow starts to laugh, a rasping chortle that sounds painful and ragged and Steve’s fingers tighten around the shield in response to this nightmare growing worse by the second.  

“Well fuck me, Rogers!  Do you have a hard-on for the Carter bitch?!  That’s just so perfect!  And here we all thought you only liked fucking grannies!”

Rumlow’s still laughing and Sharon whimpers at his back, her fingers clenching instinctively in the sweaty sheets even as her fever rages through her battered body.

The body this asshole made sure to break.

His eyes have adjusted enough now and he can make out Rumlow leaning casually in the doorway of the bedroom, a massive sniper rifle dangling from his fingers; he shudders at the thought of the damage that gun has caused in the woman sleeping at his back.  

Every nerve in his body sings at the thought of what it will feel like to smash the curved surface of his shield once more into this bastard’s face and his teeth bare in response to the welcome adrenaline beginning to heat his blood.

“I’ll tell you again, Brock,” he says quietly, every syllable he utters nothing but controlled and level.  Ever the captain.

Ever the hero.

Fuck that.

He’s going to smash this asshole’s teeth in and cherish the feel of bone breaking beneath the shield.

“Get out.”  

“Make me Rogers.”  

Rumlow is wearing a mask-which isn’t necessarily unusual, just even more unsettling in this shadowy space-but Steve can still see his eyes, can still see them glint as the man takes him in and the woman he stands between; he knows in that moment, knows that if he hesitates for even a moment, Sharon is going to die.  

He doesn’t hesitate.  

The door explodes beneath them, the moment Steve’s body collides with Rumlow’s and both men are covered in crumbling plaster within seconds-but neither notice.  

This-this becomes a battle of life and death and in the end…

Steve is tired of hesitating.  

“Stay away from her,” he bites out between punches and teeth-jarring slams of his shield against Rumlow’s chest.  “ _Get out of here Brock._ ”  

The bastard is grinning-he can see his lips lips curling beneath the mask-but that doesn’t stop Steve’s fist from smashing his teeth in.

“Got a crush on the old lady’s bitch niece, Rogers?  How cute.  Her cunt not as dry as granny’s?” he jeers as he aims a kick at Steve’s chest.  He’s fast-even with his blood spilling from his broken mouth and nose.  

“ _Shut the hell up Brock.”_

Steve simply catches his foot and wrenches it sideways, the sound of bone shattering loud in the ancient apartment.

If Sam could see him now...

He grits his teeth when Rumlow shrieks and crumbles to the ground but he knows better.  He knows Brock Rumlow almost as well as he knows Sam Wilson.

He knows no matter how much he curses him out, he won’t go down that easily.

As it is-he doesn’t see the gun aiming in his direction until it’s too late.

“ _Captain!_ ”

Her voice is lost in the blast of Rumlow’s gun and Steve’s breath hisses between his teeth the moment the bullet grazes his shoulder.  

But he doesn’t notice the pain.

He doesn’t hear Rumlow curse.

His eyes meet hers from over Rumlow’s twisted body and he shakes his head as she points her gun between the man’s eyes.  

“Sharon,” he says, the plaster coating his tongue making his voice rasp.  “Sharon, don’t do this.  He’s-he’s not worth it.”

Her brown eyes, wild with fever, pain and memory, drift from his to the masked gaze of the man at her feet.  

And she cocks the hammer of the .22 he’d left on the floor beside the bed.  

“Fuck you,” she snarls and her finger squeezes the trigger before Steve can even begin to think of stopping her.  

“Rot in hell.”  

**

Sam doesn’t understand what Sharon sees in Steve.  

It’s as simple as that.  

“You do realize the dude has, like seventy years of post traumatic stress to get under control, right blondie?” he asks one day as he wheels her through the halls of the hospital, towards the double doors leading towards freedom.  

She smiles tiredly as he pops the chair back on it’s big wheels, ignoring the disapproving glance of the nurse walking beside them, and shifts carefully.  Muscles, long abused, groan but for the first time in the three weeks since Steve brought her here, she feels…

_Whole._

“I’m not looking for anything serious here, Sam,” she says quietly, her eyes narrowing as he pushes her into the bright Philadelphia sun.  “And we both know he isn’t either.  He’s still chasing the Winter Soldier.  He doesn’t have time to focus on someone he has no reason to trus-”

Her words die off the moment she catches sight of who’s waiting for them, arms folded over his massive chest and eyes hidden behind the dark lenses of a pair of aviators.  His full lips (kissable lips. God, how many nights had she dreamed of kissing those lips?  How many times, after leaving Aunt Peggy’s bedside, had she wondered what it would be like to be held in those arms?  And isn’t that silly...Because she knows that now.  What it feels like to be held by Captain America) curl in a smile that she has no hope of reading.

She can almost hear Sam’s eyes rolling as Steve pushes off of the side of the nondescript black sedan waiting for them and heads for her, covering the distance between them in two strides.  

“Hey neighbor,” he murmurs, squatting so he’s eye level and _damn_ her chest is aching again.

But she doesn’t think it’s the shiny pink scar carved into her abdomen that’s the cause.

His hand rises, fingers stretching towards the strands of blonde hair tangling in her eyelashes and lips, and she shivers as he tucks it behind her ear.  He’d done that the night she’d run to the safe-house Natasha had told her about, when she’d asked for help.  

He’d done that, she was sure of it…

Touched her so gently.

His fingers are callused.  

Much like the rest of him.

She leans into his hand and summons a shaky smile.  “Captain Rogers,” she murmurs, her voice raspy thanks to the feeding tube they’d had to use when she hadn’t woken from her coma a few weeks before.  

Sam sighs behind them, eyes raised towards the perfectly blue Philadelphia skies above them, and heads for the driver’s side door.  

“Kids these days,” he mutters as he slides behind the wheel and turns the radio dial to a jazz station.  

Steve and Sharon stare at each other, silently, their shared experience from the Black Widow’s safe house standing between them, and for a moment it feels like maybe there’s something more.

Something...important.

He straightens, fingers dragging over her cheek, with it’s yellowing bruises and tiny butterfly bandages, and she shivers.

But before she can do or say anything, he bends and scoops her easily into his arms, his lips curling when she gasps and throws her arms around his neck.

Then, as he prepares to slide her into the back seat of the black sedan, his eyes meet hers and he pulls her a little tighter against his chest.

“Sharon Carter...May I ask you something?” he asks, his deep voice vibrating through their pressed-together ribcages and isn’t that just... _dangerous_.

It takes all she has to reply with a casual tone.  

It takes all she has not to stretch the tiny distance between them, to press her lips to his.

It takes all she has not to…

“Yes Captain Rogers?” she asks, her brown eyes, with the same golden flecks her aunt’s had, sparkling almost mischievously.  “What can I do for ya?”

He hesitates and then, as Sam turns the radio up a little louder and the sun shines a little brighter, he smiles fully.  And her breath catches in her lungs at the realization that she’s never seen him look so happy-not in this day and age though.

And not in anything other than black-and-white.

It’s amazing and stunning and so very sad, that smile.

Her fingers shake as she presses the tips to his jaw but before she can reach that little distance between them, he asks, “Want to get that cup of coffee now?”

Her laugh echoes on the walls of the hospital as they drive away and Sam just sighs as he slips a pair of dark sunglasses on over his eyes.

“ _I’m_ going to need therapy, after this,” he grumbles to himself, a small smile on his own lips as he catches sight of their fingers tangled together in his rearview.  “Jesus.”  

 


End file.
